The best scenario is to have inbound one-way links to your site. Those type of links show that you have something that another site found of value to link to you without having to agree to exchange links.
Exchanging links is a good thing, but only if it makes sense for both sites. Certainly competitors won’t want to exchange links. Nor would those who have a gift basket site want to link to an industrial components site. Two different markets there. Many think link exchanges are the end-all-be all to getting high search engine rankings. Not the case. Link exchanges pretty much cancel each other out and have no effect.
In addition, you need to make sure that you are linking to a credible site that is of a quality that earns your recommendation. See, when linking to a site you are basically giving a recommendation to your site visitors about the site you are linking to. Forget about linking to your best friend’s poorly developed site. This is business and you are judged by the company and the links you keep.
Be very leery of linking circles, link farms and pretty much anything that makes it sound like getting a bunch-o-links very quickly is a good thing. It isn’t. When sites participate in such programs including buying links, those links are ignored or in some cases penalized. The search engines are wise to most practices of artificially gaining links specifically to affect search engine rankings and they don’t look rank highly sites that use them.
So we’re back to square one. Create a valuable content rich site worth linking to and the links will happen. I have an article about the Reality of Linking, why not check it out?
At your service,
Judith
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Let’s see here… according to Google’s last index display, Google indexed 8,058,044,651 Web pages! This was the last figured displayed before they decided to no longer show their index count in October/2005! Now several years later — the number of sites and pages have grown exponentially.
Not all are quality, not all are of interest - as a matter of fact many are just dead files located on a server out in Internet-land. With that in mind, and the fact that in my not so humble opinion the Web is saturated, how are you going to get found in this mess?
Bullseye marketing! You know what a target looks like, right? All those circles getting smaller until you get to the one in the center - the bullseye. When you play darts, or go to the shooting range you score less with each hit that is in the circles furthest out. If you use this analogy when you think of online marketing, you cannot help but improve your overall rankings.
Each and every day e-mail lands in my inbox touting special super duper never before heard of ways to get your site listed on search engines. Many are just touting the very same bullseye theory I am going to discuss with you here - but for a price. There is no top secret elusive way to get search engine listings; as a matter of fact it is really black and white.
Here are the key bullseye marketing tips you should always consider:
- Create your own target and begin to carefully create your phrases - no one word keywords here - use phrases that you know for a fact those looking for your site will use - not what you want to get found by. Many times these are two entirely different sets of keyword phrases!If you are not sure what folks are actually using, use the WordTracker Service which offers a free trial. As WordTracker accurately claims: “Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”After investigating your market’s keyword phrases, start with the bullseye containing only your most important one or two 2-3 word keyword phrases.
- As you move to the outer circles in the target, note your less important phrases - up to two per circle. This allows you to prioritize your efforts knowing which terms are those terms that are most important and possible for you to get found by. You really need to be realistic here and not use terms that your site does not back up with content. Simply typing keywords in the code doesn’t make it so!
- Once your target is complete, begin with the bullseye and make sure that your top page’s title, description and Meta keyword tags use only these phrases. Also make sure to include these phrases sprinkled throughout your top page copy.
- Now move to the next circle outside of the bullseye. Determine which page those phrases apply to most and follow the above. If the phrases in any target circle are not closely related or do not apply to each other, you can simply create a page with information and resources that applies to each specific term. As a matter of fact that works even better!
- Don’t have pages that target each desired phrase or have pages that have 10s or 100s of keywords in the Meta tags? Then it’s time to get your bullseye marketing program up and in place ASAP! You want to begin the process of creating information packed pages targeted at one or two keyword phrases each and add them to your site.
Search engine crawlers are not sentient; they don’t think they don’t surmise. They gobble up what is on your site based on the content and the code and then based on each search site’s unique algorithm it is determined how your site will be listed.
The key to bullseye marketing is that less is more. The more keywords and phrases you have on each page, the less you are about any one thing which minimizes your chances of pulling relevantly for any given phrase. You actually will dilute your site’s relevancy by trying to get found by everything under the sun on one page or even a handful of pages. And if you do not have content that backs up those phrases - well, as we say in Chicago - foe-ged-aboud-it!
Target your bullseye and have your site mimic that layout. You’ll be pleasantly surprised as you see your targeted pages gain higher relevancy and that leads to more prominent rankings!
Do not dilute this process! Use target marketing and hit the bullseye!
Bullseye Marketing Worksheet
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